Former Olympic pole-vault champion Pierre Quinon has committed suicide at the age of 49, the French Athletics Federation said yesterday.

“The news was confirmed to me by family members,” said the federation’s president Bernard Amsalem.

Quinon’s hour of golden glory came at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, two years after he broke the world record with a leap of 5.82m.

He retired in 1992 and entered the restaurant business in the south of France, and had also been involved in preparations for the 2015 World Masters Athletics in Lyon.

Quinon was part of a golden generation of French pole-vaulters and he reached the summit when he smashed the world record with 5.82 metres at Cologne in 1982.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.